As promised, I wait for Tillie in the same place as yesterday. It’s ten, on the dot, but the street in front of my parking lights is as dead as it was ten minutes ago. Still, I keep waiting.

If Donnie were here, he’d bitch and moan until I gave up. “You’re waiting all night for someone you don’t even know,” he’d say, or something to that effect, and probably in a much more cruel, profane way.

“She’s my mom,” I would argue. “She’s the only blood I’ve got.”

And he would sneer, because Donnie never could see the value of loyalty. In his world of small-town hustles and backdoor deals, the only people worth helping, talking to, or even loving, were the ones who could give you something better in return.

When 10:20 ticks past, I bounce my head back against the headrest and close my eyes.

If Shepherd were here….

Oh, no: I’m not playing that game. It’s one thing to speculate about Donnie. It’s pure fantasy, because he never would have tagged along in the first place.

Shepherd did. He got my hopes up. Not just that something would happen between us, but that, no matter where this road led, I’d have him by my side when I reached the end. I shouldn’t have to wonder what he’d say. He should be here, right now, to say it in real life.

It’s 10:32. My eyes hone in on the corner where she should appear. When she doesn’t, I release the parking brake, nudge the gas, and crawl along until I’m on Cedar Court.

Her windows soften the darkness with a peach-colored glow. From this distance, a few yards at best, it looks like any other rancher. Any other life, suburban and typical.

I cut the engine and get out. The closer I get, the louder the noise inside seems. Not just to my ears, but to my nerves, and down to every last cell, a chill in my marrow I can’t ignore. I duck into the shadow of the porch and wait.

Sure enough, when the storm in the living room subsides, a door slams in the back of the house, and the front one clicks open. The footsteps I hear are whisper-soft. Her hands fumble with her lighter; it drops and skitters across the wood, right between two railing spindles, and into my hand.

“Kathryn,” she gasps, when I hold it up.

“He’s got warrants, you know.”

Her face shifts in the light as she kneels, one hand resting on the slat beside mine. “What?”

I pull out my phone and show her the database for Crossbridge County, where two Nicholas Lawsons have four warrants between them. I swipe to the state database I bookmarked and show her the rest. “I don’t know which one he is, Nick M. or Nick B., but they’re all bad—domestic violence, sexual assault, failure to appear…that’s why he moved. And that’s why he had you rent this place in your name.”

She takes the phone and stares at it. The backlight shadows the bruise, making it look even bigger, and shows me a new one along her jaw. It’s faint, so it might even be old, hidden yesterday with makeup.

“He just said his credit was bad,” she whispers.

“He lied.” My volume is low, but my tone is razor-sharp. It has to be.

Granted, Donnie was a different class: psychological, getting in my head and under my skin. It wasn’t like Javier, who I left the very first time he dared grab my arm hard enough to bruise. Physical abuse became my benchmark, so Donnie’s mind games, infidelity, and psychological jabs were easy to miss.

But the type of abuse is just a formality: I still know what it’s like when you get that first person telling you to leave. If they aren’t firm, you won’t listen even a little. My only shot at getting Tillie out of here is this icy, commanding voice, even if it makes her wince.

“You should go,” she says, tears dancing on her bottom lashes. She lights her cigarette and stands, but doesn’t move away from the railing.

This is good. She’s listening.

“I’m not leaving until I know you’re safe.” I take my phone back and glance at the windows. They’re empty. “And right now, you definitely aren’t.”

“Kathryn,” she sighs, smoke rising with the sound. I wait for her excuse, but she swallows hard, instead, and stares at her feet.

“Leave with me.”

I rehearsed this all day. Show her the screenshots, tell her like it is, and get her to leave. Okay, so I thought we’d be in a diner or coffee shop right now, where she had some breathing room to make the decision, but it is what it is.

I’ve got a nuclear option, too: calling the cops on this asshole. There’s just one problem with that plan.

“I’m not sure what he’s capable of,” she says, echoing my thoughts.

That’s the drawback to any nuclear options: you risk way too much in collateral damage. If I call the cops on Nick with Tillie here, it’s pretty likely he’d hurt her, or worse.

Before I go that far, I want to know she’s safe. And if I can just get her off this porch, into my car, and a few miles away from him, she will be.

“He wouldn’t dare come after you in Indiana,” I assure her. “Not with this many warrants.” I reach up and find her hand on the railing. My fingers sift themselves into the spaces between hers. “We need to leave now, though.”

Her hand jerks back, like I’ve stung her. “Now?”

“Now.”

Tillie looks at the window. I see her chest shudder as she takes a breath.

“Ever since I gave you up,” she says softly, “I wondered if I’d ever meet you.”

She shuts her eyes. When she reopens them, they’re focused entirely on mine, her tears the same peachy color as the window.

“It’s…it’s surreal, finally getting that chance,” she says. “In a wonderful way. But now you’re asking me to come with you...and I’m learning all these things about Nick I should’ve known all along, but…”

Her sentence dissolves. I don’t have to hear the rest to know what it is. I’ve said those same words before, made the exact same excuse. “But I love him.”

It doesn’t matter how long the cons list is and how few pros there are; it doesn’t matter how badly they hurt you. When you love someone, or even think you do, you only see them through a special lens, a kaleidoscope that twists the truth into something prettier. Only when one final fact unfolds right in front of you, a total and inescapable bombshell, can you admit to yourself that love isn’t enough.

Like mother, like daughter, I guess.

I stare back at her. “If you were the one down here, and I was up there…what would you tell me to do?”

Tillie steps away from me, shaking her head. This is it; I’ve lost.

Then, her jaw sets.

It’s a look I know well. Dad always called it my “out of Lila’s way” face. I felt my jaw clench just like that so many times as a kid, determined to prove a teacher or some schoolyard bully wrong. I felt it the day I left Donnie, when he sat at the foot of our bed, still smelling like the girl I’d just chased away, and smirked, “What, you gonna leave?”

All this time, I thought it was a quirk of mine, nothing but a random ingredient in my personality. Now I wonder if it was programmed into me, all along.

“Okay,” Tillie whispers, as her spent cigarette goes spinning, end over end, into the shadows. “Let’s go.”